#twsitd

[louisetteschuunishenanigans]

Honestly one of my first contacts with this fandom was repeatedly falling in a quicksand pit of text posts on Pinterest so. I thought why not make some I don't think I've seen made before? (Black Eagles Edition, but half of them are just Edelgard)

[wanderingmind867]

I like agartha and the agarthans in Fire Emblem Three Houses. The agarthans taught me about the bizarre mythology of agartha. Some people really believe there's a hidden underground continent named agartha, and it apparently first showed up in some pseudoscience or whatever texts written in the 1870s. It's fascinating. And although the agarthans are evil, I think of them as the embodiment of why I hate everything I learn about the old testament in the bible. I've never read the bible. I can't handle the old language. But I've gotten the gist of some of some of the main stories.

Why did God flood earth? Because we didn't respect him enough. Why were we kicked out of paradise? Because we dared to yearn for knowledge. Why did God destroy the Tower of Babel? Because he was scared humans working together would rival his own power! The God of the Old Testament apparently goes back to Yahweh, an ancient war deity. He was worshipped in the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah. He's from the same region as deities like Baal and Asherah, if that means anything. And I see the God of the Old Testament being a war god. He is very…spiteful.

Reading the fire emblem wiki I found gives me the impression that the agarthans are the humans here, and that Sothis is Yahweh. We can't see the past, but apparently Sothis punished the agarthans ancestors for daring to be technologically advanced. They dared to create technology and dream of being equal to the nabateans. As punishment for their insolence, Sothis and her daughter Seiros waged war on them. The continent was devastated in the war. Sothis healed the land, but she fell into a long slumber. And those mortals who dreamed of technological greatness…they were forced to go underground.

Living underground, these mortals learned to nurse a grudge. For centuries they wanted revenge, hating the unfair punishment they felt they received from the Goddess. As they lived underground, they adapted. Their skin grew chalk white, their eyes adapted to see in pitch darkness. They brought their technology underground and they planned revenge. As the generations passed, the anger only grew. They eventually just became bloodthirsty. They would kill the goddess. They would slaughter the nabateans, and they would take back their place in the sun!

So the agarthans became immoral, and they eventually manipulated Nemesis into killing Sothis and her kin. From there, they got to work using their science to make weapons out of the bones. But this only led to Rhea/Seiros going mad with grief, and so the cycle continued onwards. Rhea wasn't at fault. Nemesis was at fault, being a common bandit so willing to slaughter someone for power. But the agarthans weren't at fault. They wanted revenge for their wholesale devastation years prior, and that's still something they fight for.

The agarthans were mistreated, abandoned by everyone. So they turned to dark arts and evil science to try and advance their cause of returning to the surface world. If Sothis hadn't punished them in the past, they wouldn't have become what they did. This is on Sothis just as much as it is on the agarthans! Sothis started it. The nabateans had a chance to make amends and apologize for what Sothis did, but they never took their opportunity. So the agarthans eventually snapped and became willing to murder the goddess. And thus began the conflict in Fodlan.

Rhea isn't the evil one, really. It's her mother. Sothis started everything, and the fact that she isn't alive to pay anymore means the agarthans had to turn to focusing on the rest of the nabateans. If Sothis was still alive, I think her death would've fixed everything. If you could get Rhea to see the cruelty of her mother…we might be on the way to fixing the continent.

I love Solon. He's my favourite of the named agarthans. The old warlock dabbling in human experimentation and hiding out as a kindly librarian. I wish he was playable. I would kill to support him and talk to him. He's older than Kronya and maybe even older than Thales. He might know more about the conflict than any of the other agarthans we get to meet. He certainly knew about the void dimension of Zahras. And him referring to Byleth as the "Fell Star"…I know Solon was hiding some great lore. I would've loved to have seen more of him.

[coucou-art]

Even Abyss was unaware of the fact that Garreg Mach was built atop an ancient necropolis that had been buried at hell‘s depth after a war between gods

‚The Lost Civilization‘

‚ ‚Evil Eye‘ Zahras Astovidet‘

[slotumn]

My personal headcanon about the Agarthans is that they actually began as a political/ideological movement, rather than a culture in the ethnicity sense.

The politics and ideology in question is along the lines of "the fact we are in the place we are (both in terms of economic status and the ideology they subscribe to) prove that we are inherently (genetically) superior" + "the unwashed masses are a waste of space and resources that will reproduce more shitty genetically inferior subhumans and were only ever good as cheap labor (slaves) for us to use, but we have reached a technological singularity where we don't need to rely on them for that either; therefore the correct and natural thing to do is liquidate them and make the world our playground"

The main reason why they dislike Sothis is that 1. she can hard counter their technological singularity because she has full mastery of everything it was built on in the first place, and 2. she is a definite and unlimited safety net for the "inferior unwashed masses" to turn to, which is a big obstacle to Agarthans making Soylent Green out of the underclass

As one might expect, the movement is mainly lead by the ultra-wealthy, but there are actually a disturbing amount among the "unwashed masses" who agree with the Agarthans, thinking they are somehow an exception. Probably not a majority, but enough. Because you are not immune to propaganda etc and of course the Agarthans have money to spend on that.

Meanwhile, even when the goddess quite literally exists in physical form, the decline of religiosity in a post-industrial society still applied. The goddess and her children are there as a form of public service/social safety net, are generally well-respected, and still worshipped/revered by religious people, but overall their social authority isn't as absolute as it was back when humans needed to rely on them for more fundamental survival and safety needs.

So after getting enough bullet fodder on their side through relentless advertising and propaganda, the Agarthans declare war on Sothis for daring to have the concept of public good (in a "they are all my children and I must care for them" way) and not being a eugenicist. Ultimately they lose, but they do succeed in killing off most other humans. And the fact they survived this war at all reinforces their belief that they are superior and everyone else in the old civilization were inferior fucks who Deserved It.

As for the the "new" humans that Sothis repopulated Fódlan with, whose DNA is most likely reconstructed from the humans who sided with Sothis?

Obviously they are genetically pre-determined to be shitty subhuman slop, and Sothis is a bitch for daring to give the "untermensch genes" another chance in the world.

Anyway elitism, social Darwinism, and eugenics are definitely great things to base a "civilization" on and broil in for thousands of years. Treating the "subhuman slop" as lab rats and disposable tools to use against Sothis and her kids will not come to bite them in the ass at all.

Tl;dr what if you suggested that social safety nets should exist but then the We Love Putting Poor People Into Grinders Society started screaming about how you are an untermensch who has been brainwashed by the woke commie goddess* and launched an ICBM at your city

(*said goddess has essentially just been doing the same shit she always did ever since she arrived, long before the development of modern ideologies)

[azelfandquilava]

”Saint Consumed”

Thinking about pre-Agarthan Cornelia again :(

Art by salmonarttt

[medicallyfascinating]

Hey! Do you have a link to your TWSITD lore? I'm curious about it :)

omgggggggg i get to talk about the things im interested in-

okay so honestly i dont think i actually have any posts that i've directly talked about my agarthan lore in BUT I HAVE AGARTHAN LORE NEVER THE LESS

So- my ideas-

I think the agarthans were originally humanity, the same race as fodlanders (or whatever we call them). I'm assuming they kind of lived alongside the people who originally took the saint's blood or perhaps they were all the same group and they split, one side to go with the Nabateans and the other half went with the Agarthans. They had their own God (Epimenides) who they worshipped and they own culture surrounding their religion and such. And then the Nabateans rocked up. The agarthans were not happy about this let me tell you that because IMMEDIATELY the nabateans were like "we're Sothis and Sothis' kids" and the agarthans were like "okay...?" and continued on with their lives whilst the Nabateans started taking over and then the original founders of the main Houses of The Empire drank their blood and became all powerful and the agarthans were like "?????? okay?????"

ANYWAY eventually the nabateans started taking up more and more space and the agarthans were pushed out and they got **mad** and started developing their black magic and THEN they killed sothis AND THEN nemesis rocks up and he can wield sothis' spinal cord???? and it's all powerful??? Uh Oh.

I can't exactly remember what it is Rhea says about Nemesis but I vaguely remember the implication is that he kills a ton of agarthans (i genuinely cannot remember, please tell me if I'm wrong) but this causes the agarthans to be pushed underground and to hide away so they're not all murdered and THEN they start developing black magic even further and start experimenting on their own bodies to make themselves stronger and other stuff- Wuh Oh

And then someone kidnaps Nemesis- does a thing that turns him evil (not the thing they did do edelgard) and boom- bish bash bosh- all of Rhea's siblings are dead- they're winning

TIMESKIP- during said time skip they're here and there- they help out Loog and some other people but mostly stay underground and kidnap people and do experiments

and then BOOM SHEZ IS BORN- they kidnap them- implant them with the Crest of Epimenedes or whatever the fuck it is they do to them and then one of the agarthans defects and takes Shez with her and raises them in the mountains of Leicester

[jazzyfleur]

I‘ll take good care of you.

A watercolor drawing of Cornelia Arnim aka Cleobulus in disguise. I love her evil persona so much.

[awooo-oooo]

The silly!!!!! Just kidding he's actually not silly and killed like five billion people or something